yogalila

looking closer at lululemon

Trendy, overpriced yoga clothing retailer Lululemon,ubiquitous around Vancouver in particular and Canada in general,has come under criticism in the past for it's use of child labour and the origins of the store name (hard for Asian tourists to pronounce).  Now an article in the August 2006 issue of the Canadian women's magazine, Chatelaine, is causing yet more lululemon devotees to question their support of the company. The article,titled The Untold Story of Lululemon, details Lululemon's connection with the Landmark Forum:

                                  Wilson credits his success to The Landmark
Forum, an intensive international 3 1/2-day training seminar. The program has
garnered widespread criticism for what some see as its boot-camp techniques,
hard-sell recruitment tactics, heavy reliance on free labour, secretive nature
and its links to Werner Erhard, a former Scientologist who developed the
methodology.
    Wilson so heartily believes in the Landmark approach that it has been
made mandatory for management staff to participate in the training. Lululemon
picks up the tab on the $495 tuition. Legally, companies like Lululemon have
the right to ask this of their employees. If employees do not want to attend,
they can be terminated as long as severance is offered.

The article goes on to talk with one manager in detail about her reservations about the advanced Landmark training she is expected to undergo and her conflicted feelings over taking the training or losing her job.

Chez Kirby wrote to Lululemon after reading the Chatelaine article and posted their response.

I was a happy customer of Lululemon back when they were a small little operation hidden at the top of a dark staircase on West 4th -and one of the only places in Vancouver to buy yoga supplies.  Now I am among the many disenchanted.

fun with the internets

Using Google's Trends application (in beta), with which you can see how often a term has been searched for on Google over time,how frequently your topics have appeared in Google News stories, and which geographic regions have searched for them most often, a look at the yoga trend:

Yoga on Google Trends

Vancouver is fourth among the geographic regions, after San Fran, NYC and Pleasanton (??? - will have to look that up).  That shouldn't surprise me, but it does.

And thanks to MCPetruk for putting up clips of Krishnamacharya and Iyengar from the 1938 film of a yoga demonstration on YouTube.

Starbuck coffee klatch yoga moms

Maclean's (Canadian national newsmagazine - I guess it's roughly the equivalent of Time or Newsweek) recently published an interview with magazine editor Bonnie Fuller. Twice, interviewer Linda Frum makes comments about "yoga moms":

LF: True. But for the upcoming generation of mothers -- Generation Y -- indulging in the luxury of time spent with children appears to be the new ideal. The boomer "having it all" lifestyle seems to have given way to a child-centred lifestyle -- where women also revel in their leisure, their yoga bodies, and their Starbucks coffee klatches.

BF: That is a lifestyle that if women want to do it, and they can afford to do it, then good for them. It works for them.

Later in the interview:

LF:If your girls grow up and choose to become coffee-klatch yoga moms, will you feel you failed as a role model?

BF: I want my girls to have the kind of life they want to have, whatever their life goals are.

Bizarre. So, the Starbucks drinking yoga mom is now the hallmark of sleek self-indulgence? Maybe it's true, if they're wearing (and actually fit into)  white miniskirts from Lululemon :)

out of control

Further proof that the "ownership society" has just gone too far - India is forced into a position of recording traditional knowledge in order to prevent others from patenting Indian heritage and then selling it back to them (see Blackberry for an example of how ridiculous the patent industry has become).

Must everything, even every idea, be owned? Is there to be nothing left to the commons?